OnlyFans investigated over children accessing pornography

Ofcom is investigating OnlyFans over concerns it is not doing enough to stop children accessing pornography.

The site – which allows creators to provide content to users on a subscription basis -is well known for hosting sexual content.

The regulator suspects it is not doing enough to stop those under the age of 18 accessing that material.

OnlyFans has blamed a problem with its age-verification software.

An OnlyFans spokeswoman told the BBC in a statement that Yoti – its government-approved provider of age-checking tools – had a “coding configuration issue” which led to a “reporting error”.

It said this error “stated a threshold was set to 23 years-of-age, during a period of time when it had been set to 20”, adding this was always higher than the 18+ age requirement.

“OnlyFans discovered the reporting error and proactively amended our report to Ofcom,” it continued.

Yoti has been approached for a response.

Announcing its investigation, external, Ofcom said it was concerned the platform had not implemented methods to check the age of users sufficiently to prevent under 18-year-olds from accessing “restricted material”, including pornography.

It said its investigation would also assess whether OnlyFans failed to provide complete and accurate information in response to the regulator’s requests.

The UK’s media regulator has overseen video sharing platforms with a UK presence such as OnlyFans, Twitch, TikTok, Snapchat and Vimeo since November 2020.

It monitors their compliance with national laws and regulations.

These include having measures in place to stop children from accessing content that could harm their physical, mental or moral development.